One Day More

*hums "One Day More" to herself as she types*

We started out the day by learning how to use the Greek metro system! Lee has a tradition of picking a student at random, handing them a metro map, and saying, "We need to get to this stop, and no fair getting help from other students. Lead on!" Naomi was the first victim that morning, and she got us to the Acropolis with great ease. Yay, Naomi! *waves her fan-fans about Animeishly*

Since we had more than ten minutes to spend at the Acropolis, we wandered around outside, had pictures taken, and even heard a very touching story: when Greece was invaded by the German army, the caretaker of the Greek flag was ordered to take it down from its spot of honor overlooking the city. When he finally did as commanded, he wrapped it around himself and jumped over the side of the mountain to his death. Wow... that's what I call ultimate devotion. But we had to move on to the museum, and there was little time to dwell on the subject.

Inside the museum were the usual statues, artifacts, but a few things did stand out to me: a mostly whole statue of a dog (a greyhound, maybe?), a horse and his horseman's leg, two separate reliefs depicting the gods, and a load of schoolkids. ...okay, the last wasn't an exhibit, but it's one of the things I remember best about the place. o_O Attack of the rabid munchkins! Run awaaay!

*regains her composure*

Yeah. Anyway, we lost Patrick and Adrienne to laundry duties about halfway through the museum, and at the same time Katina and Miss Teri left to visit with their Greek family living nearby. The rest of us left and, after a few long moments of debate, headed off in search of another museum! Yay. _-_ It was a beautiful day outside... why did we have to do all the inside stuff today?

Turned out that, on our way down the street, we randomly came across a street musician and his two sons as they played their music on a bench in the shade. Eager to get out of the sun (we had been walking for a few minutes already), we sat down to listen to them, and Lee bought a CD of theirs. When they asked if anyone else would like to play with them, Jordan (to our surprise) volunteered and sat down with the eldest son's guitar; he played a very good rendition of Classical Gas, and the other two (the father and the younger son) improvised with him. It was wonderful ^^ but maybe I'm biased, because I love good guitar music. Mwaaaah...

We left them after that, only to run into a bunch of guys wearing skirts.

Er... ^^a

It's not as bad as it sounds; they were wearing kilts, not skirts. And, since Naomi's dad plays the bagpipes, when she saw the kilts she thought it was a group of Scotsmen touristing the area and wanted a picture of them. In reality, they were a British rugby team who, when traveling, arrive at the airport with only a jockstrap and a passport and are all given costumes to wear during their trip. Last time, they had been dressed as sailors, and a girl had wanted a picture of them because her father was a sailor. Ironic. ^^a But Naomi got her picture, we got to talk to a bunch of British guys, and one of them even tried to put his tongue in her ear. She was not amused ^^ but we were.

After a while longer of walking around looking for our original destination, we got so horribly turned around that we ended up almost lost. When we were told the museum was "outside of the metro stop", we figured that it was as you came out. Not so. You had to walk past the metro stop before you found the entrance! The museum was partially still under construction still, but we got to see what it would look like (yay for tiny models with teeny-tiny people models!) when finished.

So, filing out, we headed down a little ways farther for a few shopping stops! We managed our way through our first store, and while some of us were still finishing, we heard a commotion outside; people were laughing, hooting, and wolf-whistling at something or someone. I didn't think anything of it until I heard Jordan start laughing as well, and Abigail came back into the store with a very red face. It turned out that the rugby players from earlier were making a bit of a name for themselves outside showing off, well... their manhood.

There was a bit of a full moon out, to say the least. And I was very fortunate to have missed it. *grins weakly* I'd already seen way too many statues thus far that trampled my remaining innocence, but I wasn't going to tempt fate.

We had lunch (thankfully, it was uninterrupted) and made our first of very many Gelati stops.

P|-|34R T3|-| L337 G3L471!

*beats Largo back from her keyboard with a stick*

Sorry. Anyway, after that, we wandered around until we found Greek Orthodox church to look around. Beautiful artwork, and amazing architecture. Absolutely breathtaking! ^^ W00T! And from there, we split into groups; some made their way back to the hotel, others went shopping. I wanted some worry beads I'd seen the night before, and I knew exactly who I would give them to, so I stayed with the shoppers.

By the time we returned to the hotel, there was time for a five-minute nap before setting out for the highest point in the city, Lykabettos Hill. We wanted to see the sunset from the top, but when we got there, the sun had already sunk behind the mountains. Oops. Ah, well, the view was still incredible ^^a And we had walked too many flights of stairs to not take pictures, so we took LOADS of shots before heading back down.

Dinner was caught on the way back, and when we hit the hotel, I turned in early. Everyone else stayed up on the roof, laughing and carrying on until all hours of the night.